"What's needed, above all else, is to be heard."

Tag Archives: seeking answers

Seeking reconciliation, peace, justice, or any type of “healing” suggests a brokenness, tear, or conflict. So what happens when you can’t figure out what is wrong, and it is obvious that something hurts? How do you heal an undefined wound?

We tend to blame our pain, emptiness, confusion, whatever, on a recent break-up, a current bad—abusive or too superficial—relationship, or job loss. Therapists like to blame our upbringings and parents. Parents like to blame us for being unmotivated or irresponsible.

So we turn to alcohol, serial dating, food, movies, music, exercise, church, change of scenery for relief and sometimes answers. And it doesn’t work; the pain is still there.

Sometimes the wounds heal leaving scars. And we celebrate the scar as a sign of survival. Proof that we are strong enough, wise enough, old enough, brave enough, to succeed. We look to our scars as reminders to not let the same thing happen twice. Yet there will be a new pain. If not tomorrow, it will hit someday with a force so powerful we lie in bed all day listening to songs of heartbreak and wondering why life is so unsatisfying.

I have to believe there is an answer somewhere. I have found some answers—to the breaks that have a source. Conflicts ending in loss of/abuse to personal property or threat to/loss of personal safety arrive at a restorative justice circle if they are lucky, or show up in our court systems and one side takes responsibility while the other receives compensation for the pain. Conflicts involving a loss of self-esteem end in alcohol or over-drive sociability. But for the brokenness that stems from nowhere in particular, from what I can only attribute to the curse of humanity? I have no answers.

This is what kills me. This is what makes the brokenness so unbearable. If only we knew why, then we would be able to address it and make it stop. Without that knowledge, we have to accept it, and live on despite it. True strength I guess is not surviving, but thriving in the midst of brokenness.

“[My writing] is like one of those infomercials; you know, little black babies with swollen bellies and flies on their eyes. I’ve got dead mothers; I’ve got severed limbs. But it’s nothing new. And it might be enough to make some people cry if they read it, maybe even write a check. But it’s not gonna be enough to make it stop.”